YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

Today is Friday, Jan. 15, the 15th day of 2016. There are 351 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1559: England’s Queen Elizabeth I is crowned in Westminster Abbey.

1777: The people of New Connecticut declare their independence. (The republic later became the state of Vermont.)

1862: The U.S. Senate confirms President Abraham Lincoln’s choice of Edwin M. Stanton to be the new secretary of war, replacing Simon Cameron.

1865: As the Civil War nears its end, Union forces capture Fort Fisher near Wilmington, N.C., depriving the Confederates of their last major seaport.

1929: Civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. is born in Atlanta.

1943: Work is completed on the Pentagon, headquarters of the U.S. Department of War (now Defense).

1947: The mutilated remains of 22-year-old Elizabeth Short, who came to be known as the “Black Dahlia,” are found in a vacant Los Angeles lot; her slaying remains unsolved.

1967: The Green Bay Packers of the National Football League defeat the Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League 35-10 in the first AFL-NFL World Championship Game, known retroactively as Super Bowl I.

1976: Sara Jane Moore is sentenced to life in prison for her attempt on the life of President Gerald R. Ford in San Francisco. (Moore was released on the last day of 2007.

1981: The police drama series “Hill Street Blues” premieres on NBC.

1993: A historic disarmament ceremony ends in Paris with the last of 125 countries signing a treaty banning chemical weapons.

2001: President-elect George W. Bush marks the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday at an elementary school in Houston, where he promises black Americans: “My job will be to listen not only to the successful, but also to the suffering.”

Wikipedia, a Web-based encyclopedia, makes its debut.

2006: After a seven-year journey, a NASA space capsule, Stardust, returns safely to Earth with the first dust ever fetched from a comet.

2009: US Airways Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger ditches his Airbus 320 in the Hudson River after a flock of birds disables both engines; all 155 people aboard survive.

2011: Several international envoys – but crucially none from the world powers – get a look inside an Iranian nuclear site at the invitation of the Tehran government before a new round of talks on Iran’s disputed atomic activities.

2015: In its first lethal injection since a botched one the previous spring, Oklahoma executes a convicted killer with a three-drug method.

Police in Belgium con-duct raids across the country, killing two suspected Islamist militants.

VINDICATOR FILES

1991: Austintown Township Trustee Michael Antonoff says he sees no reason why the state should build an office building in downtown Youngs-town and urges trustees to write to Gov. George Voinovich suggesting any new state building be built in Austintown.

Mahoning County Commissioners John Palermo and Thomas J. Carney say a proposal to increase the county’s sales tax from 0.5 percent to 0.75 percent is a dead issue, in part because of Auditor George Tablack’s recent accusations of poor management.

Trinity Industries says it may close its Greenville Rail Car Division, employer of 840, if business conditions don’t improve.

1976: U.S. Sen. Robert A. Taft Jr., R-Ohio, announces a $1.2 million Economic Development Agency grant to the city of Youngstown to realign streets and sewers at the far east end of the business district to allow light industrial development.

State highway worker William Paine pulls Walter L. Wilfong Jr. from the flaming wreckage of Wilfong’s car, which struck a guardrail on Interstate 680.

The Mahoning County Red Cross Chapter honors two Mill Creek Park policemen, Thomas Galich and Donald Wrench, who saved 15-year-old Joseph Brezinski from drowning in Lake Newport in May.

1966: Youngstown smoke control engineer Walter Rauh reports that a study conducted over the summer showed that about half of the air pollution in Youngstown is caused by mills, and the other half by houses and traffic.

Seventy production and maintenance workers at Salem Stamping and Manufacturing Co. vote to return to work, ending a 10-day strike.

John Putko Sr., retired Campbell police chief and an organizer and former president of Putko, Rich and Wasko Funeral Home, dies.

1941: Certificates and pins marking 20 years of service are presented to 10 employees of the Ohio Edison Co. Youngstown District Manager Sam Stites presents the pins to Lester Furey, A. Claire Foringer, Angelo Palu, Carl Peterson, Peter Tommasone, Clarence Davis, Anne Harding, Thomas Lovell, Graham Lingerman and Philip Colaluca.

Crandall, South Side and Lincoln parks are open for daytime skating, says Youngstown Park Superintendent Tom Pemberton.

The Struthers High School Junior Rifle Club is granted a charter by the National Rifle Association, say C.A. Hostetler and George Phelps, high-school faculty instructors.